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U.S. faces 'great national test' over Islamic State

Aid worker Kayla Jean Mueller’s death raises fresh outrage as U.S. government ponders the first war authorization since the George W. Bush era.

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The aunt of Kayla Mueller, the hostage of the Islamic State group confirmed dead on Tuesday, pays tribute to her niece, saying that she did 'more in her incredible 26 years than many people can ever imagine doing in their lifetime.'(AFP)

By her own brave and tender admission, Kayla Jean Mueller found God in the suffering. Her humanitarian heart just got bigger as she shifted around the increasingly atrocious Middle East, embedding into one desperate situation after another, aiming only to help.

Now Mueller, 26, is a new American tragedy — probably the saddest yet, given her guileless intentions — the aid worker’s death confirmed Tuesday by a heartbroken Arizona family, ending 18 months as a hostage of the Islamic State.

But also an ominous tragedy, with Mueller’s last emotion-stirring words — an inspirational letter smuggled out of captivity and made public with the news of her demise — raising fresh outrage at a critical moment as the U.S. government ponders the first war authorization since the George W. Bush era.

Even as President Barack Obama lionized Mueller as all that is “best about America,” senior White House officials were briefing members of Congress on the parameters of the war proposal against the Islamic State group, which will effectively replace the 2002 authorization of war against Iraq.

The new war plan is already too mission-creepy for Democratic doves, with ample wiggle-room for expanding U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria in language that vows only to prohibit “enduring offensive ground operations.” But Republican hawks will take offence at the limitations of those very words, which include a three-year limit, meaning the next American president will have to revisit the issue by 2018.

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“American are rightly outraged — anyone would be outraged — about the horrifying loss of a young woman who was clearly there for a strictly humanitarian purpose,” said Jennifer Lowenstein, faculty associate in Middle East Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A memorial in Prescott, Arizona, honouring American hostage Kayla Jean Mueller, whose death was confirmed on Tuesday. As President Barack Obama praised Mueller as all that is “best about America,” senior White House officials were briefing members of Congress on the parameters of a war proposal against the Islamic State group. (Felicia Fonseca / The Associated Press)

“But the worry now is that Kayla Mueller’s death will add to the emotional impulse to give ISIS precisely what it wants — drawing America and its allies into a stepped-up military response that is exactly the wrong thing to do right now,” said Lowenstein, using another acronym for the group.

Lowenstein is far from alone in believing an onslaught of more American bombs merely empowers the Islamic State, providing a “unifying enemy” to an otherwise fragmented extremist movement already showing multiple signs of distress.

James Traub, in a Foreign Policy essay titled “The World War Inside Islam,” prescribed similar caution Monday, arguing there now is very little the U.S. can do to alter the course of events shredding the Middle East.

“Yes, it will be a long war — not between ‘us’ and ‘them’ but inside the Islamic world,” wrote Traub. But the “great national test” for Americans will be whether they tire of calls for patience and demand aggression, or instead come to accept the approach of containment against “an enemy they can neither destroy nor convert.”

The facts surrounding Mueller’s death remained unclear. The White House did little Tuesday to gainsay claims she was crushed beneath bombs from the nearly 60 revenge sorties Jordan unleashed last week in response to the release of an Islamic State video showing the horrific burning death of a captive Jordanian pilot. Pentagon sources, by contrast, attributed her death to the Islamic State, not Jordan.

“If a bomb from a western ally killed Kayla Mueller, it doesn’t let ISIS off the hook,” said Lowenstein. “But it adds bitter irony of the worst kind. She was a woman helping Arabs and Muslims, she was colour-blind and religion-blind. That she was held hostage to goad Americans is bad enough. If her death came via revenge from an ally, it just makes you shake your head at the mess this is becoming.”

Mueller, 26, was not without politics. In 2010, she made her way to the West Bank, aligning alongside Palestinians as part of the International Solidarity Movement’s campaign of nonviolent resistance. The ISM on Tuesday gathered up and published her early blog posts as a tribute to her efforts “for freedom and human rights.”

Three years later, Mueller was making her way through Turkey to the Syrian border, where her labours included reunifying survivors of shattered refugee families.

The uncommon grace Mueller found there, and later, inside Syria proper resonates throughout the astonishing letter written in captivity nearly a year ago. She describes feeling “tenderly cradled in free fall” by her family’s prayers.

“I have been shown in darkness, light + have learned that even in prison, one can be free,” Mueller wrote. “I am grateful. I have come to see that there is good in every situation, sometimes we just have to look for it.”

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